


Sorrow

by PinkPandorafrog



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: And character death, F/M, kind of but not really, rated for Darcy's potty mouth, some angst though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:49:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4418246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkPandorafrog/pseuds/PinkPandorafrog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ship fell on Thor and Jane at the battle of Greenwich, and there were Dark Elves everywhere. Darcy had made a safehouse, though, hopefully she and Erik would be okay there until they got rescued.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sorrow

“Oh, fuck!” Darcy exclaimed, eyes widening in fear as she stared at where Jane was currently lying across Thor. “Jane! Jane, get out of there!” That spaceship thing was falling right towards them. “Jane!”

There was a shimmery green explosion as it fell, and she could only stand there, helpless, as it hurtled down right on top of her friends.

A piece of debris flew out and hit Ian right in the stomach, sending him flying back against the wall of the university. He hit with a sickening _crack_ , his body falling lifeless to the floor. “Ian? Oh god, Ian?” She rushed over to him, only to see his eyes staring lifelessly up at nothing, his body surrounded by blood. “Ian?”

Turning back to look over her shoulder, she yelled, “Jane? Jane, Ian's been hit. It looks really bad. Jane?”

“Darcy!” That wasn't Jane's voice. Erik walked around the side of the spaceship-thing, making his way towards her. He looked unhurt, that was something. “Darcy, we've got to get out of here.” There was a hushed urgency in his voice.

“No, I've got to find Jane and get her out of here.” She looked past him to where the spaceship-thing was. There were no signs of life, but Jane had to be under there. She _had_ to.

“Darcy, there's more of those things, those Dark Elves.” One arm came around her shoulders, pulling her away from Ian's lifeless body. “We have to go.”

“But-” But she could see what he was talking about. More Dark Elves were pouring out of the buildings, making their way towards them. “Fuck.” With one final glance at Ian, she let Erik pull her away, moving towards the parking lot. She'd driven, and he seemed to remember where she'd left the car. Just as long as _it_ was still in one piece.

They scurried along, staying as low as they could to keep out of sight. The car was still untouched, exactly where she'd left it. “Oh, thank god,” Darcy breathed, moving around to the driver's side. She got in, Erik got in beside her, and she fumbled in her coat pocket for her keys for a moment. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” The Dark Elves were coming closer, intent on the two in the vehicle. At last she got her keys out, though, sliding the right one into the ignition and barely letting the car start before her foot mashed on the gas, taking them out of there.

She could hear the blare of the sirens echoing through the streets as she drove away as fast as she dared. Someone should have stayed, someone should have warned the police to stay away before more people got hurt...

Hot tears stung her eyes, and she dashed them away with the back of one hand, the other gripping the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles were turning white. A glance over at Erik showed that he was staring through the windshield, his face grim, piercing blue eyes filled with a haunted sort of pain. Yeah, she got that.

“Where are we going?” he asked after a while.

“I set up a safehouse shortly after we got here, we'll be safe there until... Until SHIELD cleans this up.” She glanced into the rearview mirror, but there was no one following them. Until SHIELD cleaned up... or whatever. Because while there was no way SHIELD was going to stand for this, the Asgardian contingent was probably going to be pretty pissed, too. Odin had a bit of a temper, or so Thor had said, and this wasn't going to go over well. First his wife, then his son...

Thor.

 _Jane_.

Darcy blinked furiously at the road that was starting to show the dark stain of recent rain. She couldn't deal with that right now, she had to get them to safety.

“You set up a safehouse?” Erik sounded tired, so tired.

“Yeah. Apparently we get annual alien invasions, and that time was coming up, it seemed like the right thing to do.” She'd hoped like hell that they wouldn't have to use it, but... “There's enough food and stuff to last the two of us...” She glanced over at him again. She'd originally planned for her and Jane, two relatively small women, but Erik ate a little more than Jane did. “A couple months, anyway.” It couldn't take that long for Odin to rain down fire all over Earth for losing his son, could it?

Silence, thick and heavy, hung in the car as she drove through London. She was headed for Canning Town, she'd found an abandoned building and had jury-rigged electricity and water, just waiting for her to finish setting up. Luckily, it wasn't too far from where they were going, and when she pulled her car into the empty parking lot, she breathed an audible sigh of relief, the tension in her shoulders easing just a little.

“This is it.” Her seatbelt was off and she was getting out of the car before Erik had even reached for the buckle on his. The green paint was peeling off the lone door in the concrete wall, and Darcy hurried over to it like she was worried that someone would swoop out of the sky onto her head or something. And really, that wasn't such an unrealistic idea. She'd had a key made for this building, and she unlocked the door quickly. It stuck when she tried to open it, and she shoved at it until it made a horrible grinding sound across the concrete before swinging open for her.

Erik was out of the car, and he quickly crossed over to where she was. She pulled out her phone and put on the flashlight thing as he stepped past her through the door. “Stay here, I'll get the power on.”

She let the heavy door swing shut and walked as quickly as she could through the dark, narrow passage to the generator room. It had been an old radio station or something, she wasn't entirely sure, but she got the generator on before heading towards the stairs that would take her down to the main water line. If they used power sparingly, they'd be okay at least until they ran out of food. Not that there would be much choice. There was, like, one light in the area they'd be in.

The water had been a little trickier to manage, but she'd figured it out. And as soon as that was taken care of, she was moving back up to where Erik was still waiting by the door. She barely came to a stop beside him before starting to move again. “This way.”

He followed her down the hall this time. “This is the bathroom.” She pointed to a door as they past it. “No heat, no hot water, and it'll be candlelight, but the water runs, at least.” Darcy kept going, a few more feet to where there was a door on the opposite side. “This is us.”

That door was closed, and she turned the doorknob and pushed it open. The light switch was just to the right of the door, and she flipped it on. The single fluorescent bulb in the center of the ceiling bathed everything in soft white that. And that probably wouldn't need to be changed, either.

There was heavy duty storage shelf along one wall, lined with boxed and canned food and bottled water. A small propane cooking unit, a table with two mismatched chairs, and a single double mattress in the corner. That was...

“There's tequila?” Erik's tone was a little disbelieving, and a look over showed he was staring at the alcohol section of the shelves.

“Yeah. And today...” Darcy shook her head, moving across the small room to grab a bottle off the shelf. “Today's a tequila day.” There were cups somewhere, plastic tumblers, but why fucking bother? She pulled the cap off the bottle and rested it on the shelf before pulling the bottle to her lips for a drink.

Erik was still standing by the open door, and she held out the bottle to him. He walked over and took it from her, raising it to his mouth for a long drink.

* * *

 

There was no cellphone reception in their little concrete bunker. No windows, no way out unless they wanted to go outside. And Darcy... Darcy did not want to go outside.

There was one laptop. Erik used it a lot, trying to sort through the science in his head. They slept a lot. Sharing the mattress wasn't really a big deal, except Erik snored. Like a chainsaw mowing down entire forests.

And the grief... That was part of what led to the sleeping a lot. She tried to make sure she didn't cry near Erik. He wasn't good with crying, he'd told her that in New Mexico after SHIELD had taken all their shit-at least she and Jane weren't criers, because he didn't deal with crying very well. But if she spent too much time away from their shared living space, he got worried.

The isolation, too, that messed with their heads. It was probably a good thing there wasn't a _lot_ of alcohol, because Darcy would probably be working her way towards an alcohol dependency. But they talked a lot. He told her about growing up in Sweden, she told him about the small midwest town she'd grown up in. It was nice to have someone there with her, even though he wasn't Jane.

Days turned into weeks. A month passed. Another week, and then another one. The food supply was starting to get low.

Darcy was sitting on the mattress, playing _another_ game of Sudoku on her phone. No signal, but she could still play stupid games. She looked over at where Erik was sitting at the table, squinting at the laptop. “I'm going to have to go and get food.”

It took a second for what she said to fully register, and he looked up at her, eyebrows drawing together in a frown. “No.” The word was forceful and sudden, and both of them winced.

She sighed. She'd gone out briefly a few weeks ago to see about getting a signal for her phone, but there'd been a Dark Elf just across the parking lot from her, and she'd gone back into the bunker, her heart racing. “I'm not asking, Erik. We're running low on everything.” Even that pseudo-Cantonese rice thing neither of them really liked.

He scrubbed his hands over his cheeks, running them up into his hair. “Darcy, it's too dangerous. You can't go out there.”

“Okay, but dying from starvation is _also_ dangerous. And, like...” She let out a long sigh, shaking her head. They were running low on fuel for the generator, too. And the little bottles of propane. “I went out a couple of days ago, there was no one there.” No reception, either, but the absence of Dark Elves was kinda promising. And London still seemed to be standing, what she could see of it anyway.

Erik just kinda stared at her, shaking his head. She pushed herself to her feet, setting the phone down on the mattress. “I'll go now, I should be back in a few hours.” She'd been building up to it all day. It was about 2:00, which meant she could be back way before dark. Because even though she hadn't _seen_ any Dark Elves, the idea of going outside was still kind daunting.

“Darcy...” Erik stood as well, and it was impossible to miss the way he put himself between her and the door, his hands settling on his hips. “Have you thought this through? Where are you going? How are you getting there?”

The car... Probably wasn't going to start. Dead battery. Darcy shrugged. “I'll have to walk. Put some stuff in my backpack, come back.” Her backpack wouldn't be able to hold nearly enough, they both knew it.

“Don't... You can't go.” There was pain in his piercing eyes, a pain that rooted her to the floor where she stood. “We'll...” His hands rested on his hips, his expression almost desperate. “We'll go another day, both of us.”

She stood there for a second, shoulders rigid as she stared up at him before sighed, slumping a little bit. “Yeah.” After the day of mental preparation she'd given herself, it was both a relief and a let down not to have to go anywhere. But she couldn't... She couldn't see that look in Erik's eyes. They were each all the other had left. “Okay.”

He held out his arms to her, and she moved through the room until she was tucked against his body, under his chin. They'd spent a lot of time like this, her arms around his waist, his cheek against the top of her head. His sweater was still soft under her hands, he still smelled like books and sawdust. He was real, he was there with her. She closed her eyes, resting against him. She could have sworn she felt his lips against her hair.

There was a noise at the door. That happened sometimes. A bird or something would thud into the door, followed by a heart-stopping moment of panic. But then it would be quiet, and they would breathe again.

This time, though, the noise was followed by another one. Darcy's arms tightened around Erik, eyes squeezed tightly shut as she held her breath.

The door _opened._ They heard it clearly, the grinding noise as the metal pushed past where it got stuck against the concrete. The only reason she hadn't woken up Erik when she'd sneaked out a couple of days ago was because his snoring drowned out the noise. But now they heard it plain as day.

There were voices. Erik turned, falling back to stand beside her. They had no weapons, they had nothing. All they could do was stand there and _will_ whoever it was to leave. Both of them were breathing shallowly, trying to make as little sound as possible.

Footsteps, heavy footsteps along the concrete hall outside. The door to the bathroom, more voices. And then their door swung open. Dark Elves.

Darcy flew at them, kicking, hitting, she wasn't going down without a fight.

“Darcy!” was the last thing she heard before something sharp stung her neck and everything went dark.

* * *

 

She woke up in a bed. Not the comfortable mattress she was used to sleeping on, but a bed that was hospital clean and crisp. There was... A dull weight against the side of her wrist. Opening her eyes revealed an IV taped there, clear fluid running into her arm from a tube.

“Oh, thank god. I told them not to shoot you, but... Darcy?”

That voice, that impossible voice. Darcy's eyes widened as she looked over to the padded chair by the wall. Jane was getting up, moving across the room towards her. “You died,” she said, shrinking back in her chair. “Jane, you died. You can't be here. What's... What's happening?” There was a helpless sort of look on Jane's face. “Erik? Where's Erik?” Darcy pulled back the jade green sheet and the cream cotton blanket that covered her up to the waist, swinging her legs towards the side of the bed.

“Darcy, I don't think you should get up.”

“Okay, I'm not taking advice from dead people.” She felt stiff, like she'd been run over by her shitty car. They were in a small room that looked a lot like a hospital room, but somehow lacked that impersonal touch hospitals always had. “Where's Erik?”

“I don't think you should get up yet,” whoever that was said again. She sounded upset, worried.

The door opened. A man with curly dark hair came in. He was wearing a gray-striped shirt, and he looked tired, drawn. And vaguely familiar. “Darcy, you can't get up yet.”

Her eyes focused on him, narrowing into a glare. “Who the fuck are you? Because if you come too much closer, I'm going to rip this out and fucking stab you with it.” And she meant every word.

“My name is Dr. Banner. I'm...” He stopped, apparently sensing her potential hostility, and raised his hands in the air. “Jane, can you give us a minute?”

“Yeah. I'll be right outside.” Whoever that was sounded upset as she left the room, closing the door behind her.

Dr. Banner looked at Darcy for a moment like he was trying to do his very best attempt at non-threatening. And he was doing a fairly good job at it, too. Except... “Wait. Dr. Banner? Dr. Bruce Banner?” She'd seen that face before on TV.

“Yes.” He grimaced a little, and she sat back against the bed in a bit of a daze. Because the Hulk was in her room, looking for all the world like he was her attending physician or whatever.

“Where's Erik?”

“He's...” Dr. Banner looked a little upset. “He's in another room here. He's a little upset right now.”

“Fuck.” Darcy shook her head, reaching for the IV on her hand. “I need to see him.” Her eyes focused on the clear tape, fingernails digging under the corner.

“Wait.” His voice pulled her attention, and she looked up to see his hand coming out towards her, hovering in midair, eyes fixed on her IV. “You were a little dehydrated, and the saline is helping normalize your system. I'll take it out, if you'll let me.” His tone indicated that his was clearly up to her, but he'd really rather he did it.

To be fair, she'd rather he did it, too. Otherwise there would be blood everywhere. “Okay.”

He walked slowly towards her, hands still up like he was Mr. Non-Threatening. “I'm going to get a pair of gloves and a cotton ball and some tape from this drawer.”

She nodded, watching him ease open the drawer in the table beside the bed. Sure enough, latex gloves, a cotton ball, and white medical tape came out. He quickly put on the gloves, then held out his hand.

She hesitated for a second before lifting her hand and resting her wrist against his fingers. He took out the needle quickly, pressing the cotton there at just the right moment and holding pressure against it for a few seconds. She pushed her thumb against it, and he used the opportunity to get a piece of white tape to secure the cotton in place.

It hurt a little, but that was normal, she knew. This wasn't her first IV. When she was all bandaged up, Dr. Banner offered her his hand again. She eyed it for a moment, then placed her hand in it. He could have cleaned her clock at any time, but he _hadn't_ , and that had to count for something. Especially if he was going to take her to Erik.

His other arm went around her back, under her shoulders to help support her. Darcy thought it was pretty awesome that she was in some some sort of generic gray, super long t-shirt instead of a backless hospital gown. He led her across the room, hand slipping from hers just for a second to open the door.

Walking hurt. Whatever they'd shot her with obviously fucked up her muscles. Like, all of them. But he didn't say anything, letting her dictate the pace as he steered her down a wide, carpeted hall. And since when did hospitals have carpet in the halls? Carpet was too hard to clean from bio-hazardous shit like blood. “Where are we?”

“The Avengers Tower. The medical wing.”

“New York?” That was... Definitely not London. Pretty far away from London, actually. “What the actual fuck?”

“I can explain it now, or I can take you to see Dr. Selvig and then explain it.”

That seemed like the much better option. “Do that.”

They shuffled over to a door just a couple rooms down from Darcy's, and Dr. Banner opened it. Erik was in bed, and he didn't look... There was a bruise across his forehead, and he had that same wild expression he'd had when she'd busted him out of the mental hospital. “Erik?”

“Darcy.” His hands came up from the bed, reaching for her, and she stepped away from Dr. Banner and went to him. Her head dropped to his shoulder as her arms wound around his chest, and she could feel him holding her, though not as tightly as she was used to. “I'm so glad you're okay.”

“Me too.” After a long few seconds, she pulled back enough to sit on the bed by his legs, wincing as her muscles protested, even with the softness of the bed. Her eyes scanned over his face. “You okay?”

“I don't know, Darcy. I think I'm going crazy again. I saw Thor...” Blue eyes searched hers like he was looking for reassurance.

She shrugged, looking over towards Dr. Banner, who was pulling a chair away from the wall. Not over to the bed, but into the middle of the room, in comfortable conversation distance. He sat down, leaning back into the back of the chair. “Thor and Jane said they saw you leaving the Royal Naval College, you both looked pretty upset and wouldn't answer them when they tried to talk to you.”

“They were...” Darcy bit her lip, eyes drifting over to Erik's. Her hand crept into his, fingers closing over his palm and pressing slightly, though whether she was giving or offering comfort, she didn't know. “They died. The ship fell on them, and they died.” The grief of losing her best friend had sort of faded into numbness, but she felt so raw, it came back up suddenly as a rush of tears welling in her eyes.

“Darcy...” Erik's free hand, slightly shaky, raised to her face to brush the tears away.

“I'm sorry. I know you don't...” She trailed off, and his hand slipped around the back of her head, pulling her gently forward. She let him pull her down to rest her head against his chest, and she could feel the fine trembling in his hand as he stroked her hair.

“It's okay,” he told her quietly.

“Tell me what happened,” Dr. Banner said, his voice unobtrusive and soft.

Between the two of them, they got out what happened. The battle, the green flash, the ship falling. Darcy couldn't help but flashback to Ian lying against the wall in a pool of his blood. The Dark Elves everywhere...

“Loki...” Dr. Banner sighed. Erik stiffened beneath her, she knew what had happened the last time he'd run into Loki. “Loki clouded your minds, made you see what he wanted you to see. The ship didn't fall, at least not here on Earth. You used your device, you sent it to Svartalfheim, apparently. Thor and Jane didn't die. That green flash, that was Loki's influence. You saw people as Dark Elves, you saw... Illusions.”

Erik was gripping her hand tightly enough to bruise. “Not again, I can't have been a slave to that...”

Darcy sighed, closing her eyes. She nestled against him, rubbing her cheek over where his heart was, and he subsided, fingers still moving over her hair.

“He admitted it. It was...” There was a pause, and when he spoke again, Dr. Banner's voice was pinched with anger. “It was a game to him. We tried to track your phone, but you didn't get any signal in that concrete building. There was a flash of it one day, and the team went to find you. Jane was...” Another sigh, and now his voice was warm, like he was talking about a friend. “Jane was really worried about you. She insisted that you were still alive, wouldn't let anyone give up on looking for you.”

Darcy took in a deep, shaky breath. Well, she owed Jane an apology.

“How do we know this isn't the trick?” Erik was asking, and Darcy's shoulders went rigid with tension again. That was an excellent point.

“I don't know that there's anything I can say to convince you it isn't. But... Even if it is, Dr. Selvig, isn't it better than where you were?”

 

* * *

 

The rest of the day only seemed to pick up. There was food, fresh food, and something to drink other than slightly plasticky-tasting bottled water. A hot shower. And TV. Godawful, mindless daytime TV. There were hugs and tears, both Thor and Jane spent most of the rest of the day in Erik's room with them. Apparently Heimdall hadn't been able to see them either, Loki's illusions shielded them from that.

Dinner was amazing. Just fucking absolutely amazing. And Darcy ate until she thought she'd explode. She was getting tired, though, and she went back to her own room to try to get some sleep.

She couldn't sleep, though. She laid in the surprisingly comfortable bed and tossed and turned for an hour or two, but despite how desperately her body cried out for sleep, she couldn't seem to get there.

Sighing, Darcy swung her sore legs over the side of the bed again, getting to her feet. Food had helped, but it had been a long day, and now she just felt like one big ache. She shuffled across the room to the door.

The hall was quiet and empty, and Darcy made her way slowly along the textured gray carpet to the door just a couple down from her own. She hesitated outside for a second, staring down at the shiny metal doorknob before turning it and pushing her way inside.

Erik was lying down, but she knew he wasn't sleeping. No snoring. Sure enough, when the door creaked a little as she eased it open, he bolted upright. “Darcy, you scared me!”

She gave him the ghost of a grin, mincing her way across to him, the door swinging shut on its own behind her. “Sorry. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't hear you trying to vibrate the glass out of the windows with your snoring, so I figured you couldn't sleep, either.”

The room was dimly lit, and she could see the answering smile on his face as she reached the side of the bed. “No. No, I can't sleep.”

“Yeah.” As she came to a stop, he scooted over on the bed until there was a more-or-less Darcy-sized spot beside him. It would be a tight squeeze, but they could make it work. His hands came out to steady her as she climbed into bed beside him, rolling onto her side with her back to him so she wasn't taking up much room.

He pulled the blanket up over both of them. After just a second, she felt him roll towards her, his chest pressing against her back. Which, okay. Normally they didn't sleep this cuddly, but it was a matter of space. And, again, when his hand slipped over the extra long t-shirt she was wearing, coming to settle at the front of her waist, that was new, too. But, space.

“I was worried when I woke up and you weren't here,” he told her, his voice a murmur in the dark.

“Yeah.” She squeezed her eyes shut, her hand moving to cover his own. “Me too.” She paused for a second. “I threatened to stab Dr. Banner with my IV needle.”

“This doesn't surprise me.” He started to chuckle, his chest shaking against her as he laughed.

Darcy's grin turned into a giggle, too, she just couldn't help it. In just a second, they were both laughing like it was the funniest thing they'd ever heard, the bed creaking a little in protest. Darcy's stomach hurt more, tears streamed from her eyes. It wasn't the funniest thing ever, but they were laughing again. It was good to be able to laugh again.

Eventually they subsided down to the occasional snicker, and Darcy's jaw hurt from smiling so much. “Okay, ow. I gotta stop. Oh, holy shit.”

She heard his amused huff, the breath from his nose hot against the back of her neck. His lips were warm, too, as they pressed against the skin there...

His lips. His lips were moving against the nape of her neck. She fell still, trying to process how she felt about that. Her body, though, her body was completely on board with this. It was just a release of another kind, and that was definitely something her body was interested in.

She heard him sigh, felt his forehead rest against the back of her hair. “I'm sorry, please forgive me.”

“That's...” Darcy licked her lips, pressing them together between her teeth. “Don't apologize. I... I'm just feeling everything right now, and you...” She sighed again, her fingers winding between his as she tugged his hand up to press a kiss against his warm palm.

“I know.” He kissed her again, over her hair this time, and she cuddled around his forearm, their joined hands on the pillow just in front of her.

Neither slept for a long time.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. I've been wanting to write this for a while just to see if I could (and started it forever ago). Honestly, I think something like this would be better as long-fic, but I don't really have the time or the patience for it right now. 
> 
> This fic brought to you by Damien Rice.


End file.
